July 24, 2017

The Missile/Dam/National Park Tour Home -- and the road forward

We hit all the big missile related sites in the Southwest on our route home.

Los Alamos Bradley Science Museum.

V-2 Rocket, restored, White Sands Missile Museum

The White Sands Missile Museum.

The outdoor rocket field at White Sands Missile Museum.

The Titan Missile Museum

Giant Titan Rocket (never feuled, no warhead)

inside the Titan Missile Silo at

the Museum.

Launch control for the Titan Missile Silo.

We also visited the Biosphere and Hoover Dam, which neither of us had seen before. We took a 2 hour very educational Biosphere tour, but unfortunately, the damn tours were not being offered on the day we arrived. So we did a self-tour in the 109F heat, and got back into the air-conditioned car for our drive to Vegas.

The ocean inside Biosphere 2.

I used to love Vegas, but now it doesn't really do much for me. We had a nice quick visit with a delicious greek seafood dinner at Estiatorio Milos, followed by an hour or so of craps play by me, a good night's sleep, a quick run in the gym, and the long drive to Lee Vining, California.

The scale of the dam is hard to comprehend -- it's HUGE!

The next day, we used our National Park pass for the 5th time at the East entrance to Yosemite, finally getting over the purchase price in entrance fees for a net saving of $30. It's valid through August 2017, but we doubt we'll have the chance to hit up another U.S. National Park next month.

Smoky view of half dome from Columbia Rock

For our last night of the sabbatical, we splurged and stayed at the Ahwahnee Hotel. I'd always wanted to stay here ever since I was a little kid, and despite all of our visits to the park, I'd never done so. After checking in to the hotel, we braved the smoke from the Mariposa fires and hiked the Upper Yosemite Falls Trail to Columbia Rock and further to the first view of the falls. Despite the cool temps (the smoke limited the heat from the sun), and breeze, it was a solid 3 mile round-trip hike with 1,000 ft plus of elevation gain starting around 4,000 feet.

The dining room at the Ahwahnee.

From Yosemite, we drove to the storage unit, picked up the aerobed and a few other items, and drove home to unlock the door for the first time in over a year and start our re-assimilation back to our home-based life.

Lower Yosemite Falls -- gushing due to this year's snowpack.

After a Saturday of chores, we attended a lovely wedding, and then slept in Santa Cruz so that I could run Wharf to Wharf with E2. It's a bigger race than I realized, with a sold out registration of 16,000, of which, several thousand registrations are limited to locals. E2 got into the local lottery registration, so she encouraged me to try the general registration lottery and I got in too.

Smoky view of Yosemite Valley from the Upper Yosemite Falls trail.

My "training" consisted of intermittent running and hiking whenever I could fit it in the last several months. I had a (slow) baseline from my Peachtree Road Race, and I'd tried to fit in slow aerobic efforts mixed with some speedwork as we drove westward. Thankfully, the day of the race was blissfully overcast with a starting temperature of 57F. As expected E2 was more fit than me, but she needed a couple of portapotty stops that helped me recover. I did need to ask for one walk break after the top of the last major hill, but overall, I was pleased with how it went -- final Garmin data claimed 6.09 miles at 11:36 avg pace including all of the stops. When running, we averaged 11:21 minutes per mile, with the last 1.1 miles averaging 10:47.